One mom road tests advice on how to get kids out the door on time in the A.M. Here, what worked (and what didn't)

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I am a charming, extremely calm, completely sane woman who runs a lovely, tranquil home, and my husband, daughter, and dog utterly adore me — except on weekday mornings. That's when my evil twin emerges. Think Jekyll and Hyde, Jacob in Twilight. The rush (almost always fruitless) to get Daisy, 11, to school on time and get on with my day often has me screeching "Hurry up!" while pounding on the bathroom door and threatening "If you're not out the door in five minutes, no Xbox tonight!" with the worst of them.

In hopes of undoing my ugliness, I've scoured mommy blogs and the parenting section of my local bookstore. And I swear I've tried all of the standard advice: I've set my alarm 10 minutes earlier, put the clock in the Siberian corner of my bedroom (so as not to be tempted by the snooze button), cut up and bagged vegetables in advance (even though the carrots resembled orange noodles by Friday), had my daughter lay out her clothes in the evening, and lodged her ready-to-go backpack by the front door.

Still, every morning something stops our getting-to-school-on-time momentum cold. Last week, it was a huge tree branch. "What the...?" I said, tripping over the six-foot thing, which had appeared in my living room just as we were supposed to walk out the door. I picked up the branch and headed for the garbage. Daisy tore out of her bedroom to grab the other end.

"Why do you want a piece of wood?" I asked.

"It's for my giant-stick collection!"

"You don't have a giant-stick collection."

"I just started one."

By the time my husband negotiated a settlement — he would protect the branch from me until Daisy returned from school and we could discuss the utility of a stick collection — it was, as usual, 8:23. Late again.

Last year, Daisy was tardy 12 times. I had rationalized that this statistic wasn't so bad until my husband and I were spoken to at our end-of-year parent-teacher conference. "Elementary school children aren't late to school," the teacher said. "Their parents make them late to school." Then, I guess because the teacher could tell that nothing motivated me like shame, she added, "There are very serious consequences to chronic tardiness. Studies have found that children who are often tardy have lower GPAs, lower standardized-test scores, and lower graduation rates. And kids who are often late to school are likely to become adults who get fired from work — for tardiness!"

My husband left the conference not speaking to me. "It's not all my fault," I growled.

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is," he growled back. "It's not just bad for Daisy. It's bad for all of us. Our family starts every day totally stressed. We need a morning intervention!" I had to agree. Here's how our let's-be-prompt pledge played out.

Next:

Managing the A.M. Minefield

When I confessed our problem to a friend, she suggested I talk to Betsy Brown Braun, founder of Parenting Pathways (seminars for parents) and author of You're Not the Boss of Me: Brat-Proofing Your 4- to 12-Year-Old Child. Brown Braun sighed and told me I was falling into the oldest, most clichéd morning paradox known to momkind. By telling my daughter to hurry up, I was slowing her down. "The minute kids hear, 'Let's go! We're late!' they dig in their heels and slow down," Brown Braun said. Why? Because being rushed makes them anxious — and in the morning kids are often a little worried anyway. Younger children may have separation anxiety since they'll be away from their parents all day. Older kids may have social or academic pressures. "Kids can be very needy in the morning, but rather than asking for a hug and reassurance, they may pick a fight. That's one way they know how to engage," she noted.

Brown Braun encouraged me to start the morning with a little cozy time with my daughter. Then she told me to stop freaking out over the, um, "creative" monkey wrenches Daisy throws into our mornings.

"Stay positive and keep your eyes on the prize of getting out the door. Avoid time-consuming tussles," she said. "Then both of you can have a happy, productive day."

I took Brown Braun's advice. Instead of marching into Daisy's room at 7:30 and barking at her to get up, I walked in at 7:25 and cuddled with her for five minutes. It was really delightful. And one Wednesday, when she needed to reorganize her giant-stick collection just as her dad and she were supposed to leave the house, I said (I swear), "Awesome! We'll work on that as soon as you get home!" Looking a little suspiciously at me, my daughter left without a peep. So Brown Braun's advice was working — Daisy began to get to school on time, and without epic battles over something absurd.

The only problem was, I still felt like a drill sergeant every morning. I wasn't screaming "Hurry!" anymore, but I was yelling things like "This scrunchie is so cute!" and "Pee quickly!" I had not yet achieved calm, on-time momdom.

Inviting Other Options

So I did what any modern mom would do: I posted my heartache on message boards — how hard it was to pack my little darling's lunch, then get her up, fed and dressed, and off to school.

"Whoa! You are doing way too much!" replied Lindsey Whitaker, 29, a stay-at-home mom with five children age 8 and under in Battle Creek, MI. "You're doing about 80% more than I am in the morning, with only one-fifth the number of kids. And yours is older than all of mine!"

First, Whitaker was pretty sure an 11-year-old could figure out how to make toaster waffles and/or open a container of yogurt. Next, my online adviser felt that if Daisy didn't want to eat hot lunch at school, she was perfectly capable of making her own lunch. "Even my husband can put turkey between two slices of bread," she laughed.

Above all, Whitaker suggested that I do what sounded to me like playing hardball, but what she described as applying "natural consequences." Last year, Whitaker said, her 5-year-old, Alec, had wanted to wear flip-flops to school. She'd told him to put on his shoes. A lengthy fight ensued, and Whitaker let her son have his way — even though it was November and there was snow on the ground. "He's never done it again," she said.

The online moms also gave me grief about how I toiled over Daisy's long, thick, curly hair, taking 20 minutes to wash, condition, and comb it in the morning. I was instructed to braid it at night and secure it with a barrette. Another parent, online name Ronstarr64 (who turned out to be Ron Owen, a stay-at-home dad in Hopatcong, NJ), shared his secret: detangler spray. "Makes tangles almost gone," he enthused. "Everything is passable in less than three minutes!"

With Whitaker's and Owen's commonsense counsel, my family's weekday mornings took another turn for the better. Daisy began to like making her own breakfast and lunch. The detangler — well, that stuff is simply the nectar of the gods. Daisy's on-time performance neared perfect. But then the backsliding began. Daisy took four minutes to peel edges from her turkey slices. The detangler disappeared. We were getting back to our out-the-door-at-8:23 ways, and I was feeling ready to explode.

Next:

The Step-Back Strategy

In a stroke of serendipity, I heard clinical psychologist Thomas Phelan, Ph.D., creator of the 1-2-3 Magic parenting program, on the radio, and I decided to see if he could help. He recommended a souped-up version of the "natural consequences" that Lindsey Whitaker had made her son face when he'd worn flip-flops in the snow.

"If I do a good job of explaining it to you," Phelan said, "it should make you very nervous. Because everything you're doing — worrying about how long your child takes to pack her lunch, cajoling her to leave ridiculous things like giant sticks at home--you don't do that to be mean, you do that because you want to be a good mom." I got misty-eyed for my sweet, well-intentioned self. "But it's backfiring," he added. Ouch — the harsh truth. He noted that my efforts were making Daisy more dependent and oppositional (e.g., she was slowing down and needing help with her lunch; she lost the prized detangler) just when we wanted her to be self-reliant and well mannered.

Phelan's program was stunning in its simplicity. We had to tell Daisy that getting to school on time was now her responsibility. So we presented her with her own alarm clock, set it for 7:00 A.M., and explained that this would give her an hour and 15 minutes to get ready for school. I would continue to brush her hair for her, and her dad would still walk her to school. But other than that, everything was now up to her — and we weren't going to nag her.

The next day, I was up at 5:45 A.M. Daisy got out of bed at 8:50, 20 minutes after school started. She ran into the dining room wild-eyed and said, "I have a math test!"

I felt the intense urge to write a note to the teacher about a fictitious doctor's appointment. My husband told me to lock myself in our bathroom. I did. I heard some shouting and a lot of crying through the door. I turned on the water to drown it out. When my husband returned, he reported that Daisy had sulked but not wept all the way to school and that he hadn't said anything to excuse her lateness. And that after he'd kissed her goodbye, she had hitched her backpack high and marched with grim, soldier-like determination into the school office.

Phelan said that it was crucial to let Daisy experience the anxiety associated with oversleeping and its consequences. He made an analogy to the common dream in which one is falling off a cliff. "You wake up before you hit the ground because you panic," he said, "which is incompatible with sleep." So, he said, once Daisy was responsible for getting herself up and to school, fear of oversleeping would actually help her awaken on time.

I felt utterly sick about inducing panic in my daughter, but Phelan promised that her feeling a little anxiety now would save her from feeling a whole lot later on.

The second day of the experiment, Daisy hit her snooze button three times. She clomped out of bed at 7:30, accused me of being "a very, very mean mom," packed Entenmann's Little Bites and carrots for lunch, and arrived at school 10 minutes late.

The third day, she was on time. And she has been every day since.

We haven't stuck strictly to Phelan's (or any single) approach. We've cobbled together a strategy that works for us: I feel that Daisy does suffer separation anxiety in the morning, so I started making breakfast again — nothing fancy, just toaster waffles or a bowl of cereal with sliced banana — because it allows us all to have five minutes together. And about once a week, usually when she can't find an unbelievably important homework sheet, I slip up and bark, "Daisy, look at the time!"

But my evil, shrieking twin is no longer on full display during those early hours; instead, I'm usually sitting calmly with coffee, reading the paper. More important, Daisy, now a middle schooler, has taken on new responsibilities and gained maturity.

"Your mom wakes you up?" I overheard her say to a friend recently. "I outgrew that stage a while ago."